Innovative Workforce FundFinal Implementation and Reflection Report

Ethnic Community Services Cooperative Ltd

30 July 2018

1. Project details

Organisation Ethnic Community Services Cooperative Ltd.

Project Name Multicultural Support Choices

Contact name and position of person responsible for evaluation

Sebastian Behrens - sebastian.b@ecsc.org.au(Supervisor)

Efrosini Costa - efrosini.c@ecsc.org.au(Project Officer)

Contact details (02) 9569 1288

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2. Reporting on outcomes

2.1 Service user satisfaction and empowerment

Consistent with outcomes expected, the project was able to show through an evaluation process, including surveys and feedback and evaluation forms, that a large majority (>80 per cent) of customers are satisfied with the service delivery they received from the Multicultural Support Choices (MSC) support workers.

When surveyed for satisfaction of their experience with the MSC support workers,100 per cent of clients and their families expressed an above satisfactory result from the experience and all those surveyed maintained that they felt safe and comfortable throughout their interaction with MSC support workers.

All participants felt that they were respected, that the MSC support workers conducted themselves respectfully and had an adequate understanding of their cultural needs and their family's culture and background. Most of service users believed that the MSC support workers adequately understood their needs. When asked if they would recommend the MSC support workers to a family member or friend all participants agreed they would recommend and/or highly recommend the workers and service to others in their community.

Many users of the service expressed they felt empowered by the ability to choose from a range of MSC support workers based on cultural background, age and interests. One of the expected outcomes of the MSC Program was that participants' cultural backgrounds would mirror the demographics of the areas and clients served. While

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this was sometimes the case, many service users chose MSC support workers from a different cultural background to their own yet still identified them as ‘culturally appropriate’ to their own cultural background. That is, while support workers’ cultural backgrounds frequently differed from the service users and their family, having non-Anglo-Saxon ancestry still gave them the 'cultural capital' to understand the client and their family's values, beliefs and way of life and more importantly service individual needs in this context.

During the evaluation process service users where asked: "When choosing a support worker, which is important to you and your family?" and given a range of options, including:

Interestingly, while culture and language were of importance to most of our service users, experience and attitude were most important in terms of selection criteria for support workers. Age of support workers weighed in also, more so than gender, a reflection of the need for diversity of ages of clients to be reflected in the support work workforce – a factor which the MSC program logic incorporated.

The importance of culture was reiterated during three Peer-Input Focus Group discussions when service users and their carers were asked to help create a checklist of requirements for what they considered to be the 'ultimate support worker', this included ‘cultural appropriateness’ and ‘cultural sensitivity’.

When asked for any additional comments about the service satisfaction, all participants reflected that they believed MSC support workers provided a good service that they would readily use again.

This positive evaluation has also been reflected in the growing uptake of MSC support workers chosen and employed by service users to deliver 1:1 Individual Support for Increased Access to Community and Participation in Recreational Activities under NDIS Service Arrangements.

Evaluation after the three Peer-Input (Service User driven) Focus Groups showed unanimously that those involved in the group felt their involvement in the group discussion and project more generally would make a difference in the way support

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workers interact with them and their peers, that is, they felt empowered that their input would directly affect the type of service delivery delivered and that it would meet the benchmarks for service excellence as defined by -the service users. This was demonstrated by asking the Focus Group participants to select on a scale of 1-5 (Poor-Great), all participants selected '5', for every focus group. A similar result was given by participants in their evaluation for 'The focus group was well organised and easy to follow', The Focus Group supported my needs', 'Participation and interaction were encouraged'.

2.2 Workers Skills and Engagement

Over 70 applications were received for the role of support worker for the MSC project. Of those 75, 60 where interviewed and vetted with the help of a service user and 25 were recruited. Two workers opted out of the project after recruitment because of unforeseen circumstances, which impeded on their ability to complete the necessary training requirements.The collection of participant data was consistent with the expected outcomes. A 50 per cent male cohort of program participants was exceeded with 14 male participants, approx. 56 per cent of total.

When surveyed, 100 per cent of all MSC participants expressed satisfaction to continue to be part of the Support Work workforce and their intention to continue to pursue and seek out work in the industry.

Concurrently, all participants surveyed agreed that, after their experience with the Multicultural Support Choices project, they now viewed support work as a 'Very Worthwhile' or 'Extremely Worthwhile' profession to enter professionally. Support work was viewed positively as a profession by all participants as set out in outcomes.

100 per cent of all male participants expressed that they rated their experience with MSC project as Satisfactory or Above Satisfactory. Concurrently 100 per cent of male participants expressed that they would recommend the program to their peers.

All male participants expressed positive attitudes towards the support worker role with all participants surveyed expressing they now believed support work to be an 'Extremely Worthwhile' profession and their interest and wish to continue working casually in the profession.

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Their engagement with their work and attitude towards support work more generally has been extremely positive. Their feedback and comments below easily demonstrate this:

"I used to think that support work is just helping your clients with day-to-day activities and fulfilling their needs. Now, however, I believe that support means much more than that and it should be aimed at helping clients become more independent and giving them the freedom to make their own choices and decisions."

"In a way, my view of support work turned out to be as challenging as I had expected, but also far more rewarding that I had ever thought. I've come out of the MSC project feeling like that in the end; the clients and their disabilities have taught me more than I could have taught them."

"After working on the MSC project, I understand how important support workers are, and the impact they have on unfortunate [disadvantaged] families. I only stress that support work makes society more inclusive, particularly for CALD clients."

"Yes, I had no understanding of support work at all, before this program. Now I see aspects of collaboration as important in the process. I have learnt that people living with a disability need to be respected truly in all aspects of the world we shape. Their skill and insights are of utmost importance in relation to how we work together in this program.”

"I've understood what contemporary support work is. By this, I mean conducting support work under a social model of disability, rather than a medical model."

Comments collected though feedback included, "all my pre-conceived notions of support work have been quashed", "It was easier than I imagined" and how "prior to the MSC project I had little or no understanding of support work".

All program participants, when surveyed and through the completion of their portfolios and training, were able to identify the vast number of transferrable skills gained through program and where these could be applied to other work and employment, including but not limited to:

improved communication skills, leadership skills, accountability, adaptability, problem solving, increased resilience, observation, first aid, working as an individual and in a team effectively, understanding and responding to challenging behaviours.

More than 95 per cent of program participants are bilingual, exceeding expected outcomes. Program participants' cultural backgrounds mirrored the demographics of the areas served and service users including:

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Arabic Cantonese French Greek

Italian Mandarin Spanish Vietnamese

Other languages reflected in participant recruitment data include: Cebuano, Dari, Farsi, Hazaragi, Hindi, Pashto and Urdu. Our data collection of individuals accessing ECSC services show that these additional languages are representative of the emerging ethnic communities in the state whom we expect will become future service users.

2.3 Organisational Sustainability

We have close to 40 years’ experience in recruiting, training and equipping bicultural/bilingual people in a casual workforce model for children's services, through our Bicultural Support Program. We believe that by adapting and reshaping a model that is already well-embedded and successful in another service area to disability and the aged care sector we can ensure the organisational sustainability of the project. Our plan is to:

Set targets for NDIS participant acquisition to sustain multiple roles - including program manager, intake officer, field manager – and nurturing high-level of staff and ongoing recruitment.

These are ambitious targets that has required an investment of our organisation's monetary reserve funding that would be an obstacle for other organisations smaller to make such an investment and financial commitment.

Policy makers may wish to consider the tension between cost effectiveness and maintaining quality and whether or not it might be worth making investments in organisations aiming to sustain high quality workforces through initiatives such as MSC.

Small margins under the NDIS make it hugely challenging to cover the staff costs associated with maintaining a high-quality workforce.

That being said, we can only judge the sustainability of such a model with continuous close monitoring. Only time will tell if we are successful.

We now know that a human rights approach to support work attracts the 'right' recruits. Young people recognise and identify with values of diversity, inclusion, support and respect as well as choice and control. This emphasis on values-based work in a flexible work setting will ensure recruitment and retention of staff.

The casualisation of the care industry and support work workforce is not a concern as our recruitment strategy engages workers who appreciate flexibility of work and short-term turnaround and delivery of goals – which also increase job satisfaction. Concurrently, this large, diverse, flexible workforce facilitates choice and control for service users – in line with the goals of NDIS - and will ensure sustainability of the project into the future. The approach to this project also allows for a greater range of contexts within which staff might work for or with other providers in the sector, much

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desired bilingual/bicultural workforce increases sustainability by providing niche service delivery to mainstream services who may otherwise be unable to fulfil.

As well as outlining the professional development pathways in the care industry during the recruitment process, professional development pathways have been put in place for support workers. TAFE NSW, through national funding and Smart and Skilled initiatives, has approached our organisation to offer accredited units of study from their various CHC courses – including Cert IV in Aged Care and Disability Support, as well as First Aid and CPR for our workers for free.

This will be delivered in the coming months and will strengthen their skills and map out career progression as well as continue to strengthen staff development. Working towards Nationally Accredited Qualification for recruits will help marry-up motivation with sustained employment and ensure best practice.

3.1 Reflecting on implementation

a. Engaging stakeholders: What were the most useful strategies you used to engage and communicate about the project? How/why were they successful? What would you do differently?

With the MSC Project there were a variety of stakeholders that needed to be engaged for the program to work. This included first, young people from CALD background, particularly males, second, the group of service users which included people with disability for peer-input focus groups as well as for training and professional development of support workers and lastly large groups of people from CALD communities as well as community leaders to assist with the above and to meet the goal of changing the hearts and minds of the CALD community when it came to the value of support work and the vital role males play in care.

Young CALD recruits: A variety of organisations and higher education institutions were consulted with prior to the recruitment process through relevant interagency, forums, mail outs and direct contacting. The aim was to develop good rapport with advisers and counsellors who could steer recruits towards our program. This included TAFE NSW Careers Advisors and Careers Counsellors. They were able to identify suitable candidates and refer them across for more information. We also established links with Youth off the Streets and Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network as well as attending various youth inter-agencies and community service inter-agencies across Sydney. This allowed us to recruit participants with various life experiences that gave an additional edge to their passion and dedication to support work including youth who were at risk of homelessness and young refugees.

The recruitment strategy was much more informal with advertising on social media platforms and higher education job seeking sites that used empowering, youthful imagery with an emphasis on benefits of flexibility, job satisfaction through values-based work and a great casual wage remuneration. The vetting and interview process was very relaxed and informal and took form in a series of group interviews that were peer-led and consisted of strength-based exercises and conversational, interactive activities.

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People with disability for Peer-Input: We developed a brief yet eye-catching flyer and A1 poster calling for people with disability who use support work services to 'Have your say and get paid for it!". This marketing collateral was disseminated to our disability network contacts and we received an influx of requests to be a part of the peer-input and review process. It also attracted people with disability from peer-led services such as Disability Diversity Alliance who value the opportunity to take part in service-user led initiatives. This was also helpful in bringing our organisation to the attention of many new service users at various community events like GroovABILITY and AccessABILITY who had not come across our services before. It gave them some insight into how we respect and value their opinions when it comes to our organisation, programs and project/service delivery. This will only continue to have a positive impact on our 'brand' and set us apart from other organisations and service providers. We engaged s people with disability in a series of three focus groups where they gave us their thoughts on support worker best practice benchmarks, evaluated our program mission, design and implementation and gave us feedback and evaluation on the project and the support workers. We also enabled a one-off extra focus group which consisted of both program participants and service users coming together collaboratively to undertake strength-based resilience training to mediate the giving and sharing of their individual insights into support work.

CALD communities: Given the time constraints of the project, we could have been more realistic about the outreaching of CALD communities. In our experience, it takes time to gain the trust of community leaders and to facilitate meaningful discussion. While ESCS already has strong connections with some communities through our advocacy work, we feel that these clients are already receiving the right information. The CALD communities we would want to target are those for whom information briefing has not happened, hence why we would need longer lead times to establish better links with community leaders and more targeted events for community - especially when we are looking at engaging them on topics such as disability as there continues to remain a lot of misinformation and stigma surrounding this social issue in the CALD space.

A useful strategy that emerged in our quest to outreach CALD communities across the state and to target large audiences of community-members was to establish partnerships with the SBS Languages Program. We outreached the various programs in which we had native language speakers who could talk about Disability, Support Work, the NDIS and the MSC Project more specifically. We received an overwhelmingly positive response, with requests from the Arabic, Cantonese, Dari, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish, Urdu Content Managers asking us to provide details of MSC participants who would be able to talk about such important issues in community languages. So far, four interviews have been conducted, produced and aired and we are awaiting on more to follow. Upon reflection, had this SBS strategy been implemented right from the start we would have been able to engage a larger number of communities in this ongoing dialogue. That said, we were approached by the SBS news team about potentially running a story across their TV and online broadcast platforms, so we feel that there may be a follow-on in interest surrounding the project and support work.

Community events: From the inception of the project we decided to leverage off an inclusive event for people with disability organised by a consortium of local

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organisations, including ECSC, called GroovABILITY. We interacted with many people with disability on the day and gathered insights into what makes good support work by challenging people to summarise their thoughts in a few words on a whiteboard. Using this method, we were able to develop empowering, culturally appropriate, person-centred imagery for our communications collateral, peer-input and recruitment flyers as well as a video which helped with our recruitment and branding. We were also able to use the insights to develop our support worker performance best-practice benchmarks.

At subsequent community engagement events such as ECSC’s AccessABILITY and Goodvibes events we were able to deploy our program participants to facilitate similar community engagement strategies. This allowed the support workers to showcase their abilities and understanding of human rights-driven support work, resulting in consistently positive feedback from CALD people with disabilities and their families as well as several referrals for service use and engagement.

b. How appropriate was your initial concept? What/did you change or adapt along the way and why?

The aim of Multicultural Support Choices (MSC) project was to raise the profile of support and care work as a respectable, fulfilling and purposeful career pathway among members of CALD communities. The project aimed to increase recruitment and retention among cohorts underrepresented in the support and care work professions, namely males and young people from multicultural backgrounds. Considering the ever-increasing individualisation of personal support arrangements as well as Australian society more generally, MSC intended to diversify the cultural, religious, linguistic and gender fabric of the support and care industry workforce while increasing job satisfaction among staff.

We know that less than eight per cent of CALD people are accessing the NDIS and that it is mainly due to a lack of understanding, information and access within CALD communities to mainstream services. Language barriers only add to this difficulty and CALD people with disability face a dual disadvantage because of this. We know that a quarter of all people with disability in Australia are from CALD background.

To make the NDIS the biggest social reform since Medicare, a success for all we need to ensure that all individual needs are met, including across age, culture and language. Current Support Work workforce data does not reflect this diversity. The findings of the MSC project demonstrate that the approaches taken to diversify the support worker workforce through targeted age, gender, culture and language-specific recruitment and support is crucial to ensuring choice and control becomes a reality for all people with disability in our diverse society.

By creating this workforce, we are bridging the gap for CALD individuals with disability, their families, carers and communities.

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We exceeded targets in recruitment, showing that a genuine interest in CALD communities to take up this vital work in the care sector exists. Up until now the approach by sector and industry was not appropriate in targeting these bicultural workers who often bring with them an inherent understanding of their clients’ cultural norms pertaining to gender, family structures, respectful behaviour, sensitivities around public and private spaces, religious observance as well as community hierarchies and connections. To provide the best possible care for Australians from all diverse backgrounds, MSC was able to foster a workforce that is reflective of the diversity of needs contained within our multicultural communities. MSC’s model of workforce development successfully drew on the strengths and perspectives customers, communities and workers. We believe, considering our example, this model is both replicable and adaptable to local contexts across Australia.

That said, through our continual learning and reflecting on the program several changes to the original program logic were made.

Community roundtables - Originally, we had proposed a series of community roundtables to facilitate the understanding of the importance of the support and care worker profession and that it is regarded positively by CALD communities. However, the logistics and lead in times as well as the far-reaching goals meant we had to find ways to target large CALD audiences in a short amount of time and capture their hearts and minds. We looked to SBS Languages Radio, which has substantial dedicated audiences from CALD communities across 70 language programs. Furthermore, by engaging journalists and news presenters known in their communities would allow us to leverage off their reputation as credible sources of information and knowledge within CALD communities – crucial to engaging people in topics that may carry shame and stigma. The format of radio programming was also advantageous, as it allows individuals to engage in reflection on disability-related topics within private spaces, thus enabling engagement of individuals who may otherwise avoid attending public events on topics deemed controversial or shameful.

Coaching/mentoring – In the original program model, we specified the establishment of a purpose-built coaching and mentoring model from ECSC that would assist the MSC program participants along their professional learning journey alongside their training and skills portfolios. However, this took a multi-layered approach that also involved new options, born out of discussion with program participants and through their own initiative such as a support-worker peer forum utilised on a social media platform were implemented by the support workers themselves as a peer-to-peer based support platform throughout the program. Program participants also developed video diaries during their work placement and recorded their concerns and mindset before their placement as well as the overall feelings and record of how the day went and any successes and challenges that arose.

This program-participant led approach was much more youth-friendly because it utilised platforms that tech-savvy participants were comfortable with and used in their daily life. This way the participants were able to reflect on their practice and share with the project officer what worked and didn’t work. The project officer was able to gain a greater understanding of where each participant was in their professional development, confidence and self-management and provide feedback and create

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opportunities to build on common issues or challenges that arose, such as the addition of resilience training and a workshop on managing challenging behaviours.

People with disability who use support work service as coach/mentors - Using our Peer-Input Focus Group participants we decided to bring support workers and people with disability using services together to complete a series of interactive exercises. This meant that support workers were able to improve their skills and ask questions of people with disability about best practice service delivery, support needs, what is important to them as well as what they would like from their support worker. People with disability using support workers became the coaches and mentors and tutored the support workers on how to improve their performance. It provided an opportunity to break down barriers and allow for more meaningful interaction that wouldn't otherwise be possible on the job or during work placement.

3.2 Reflecting on impacts and outcomes

a. What are the top two or three things you have learned from doing this project?

1. The benefit of values-based support work for our organisation and for the recruitment of staff and development of service delivery.

2. The importance of including peer-input/service user feedback in to program development, implementation and evaluation.

3. Intersectionality of culture – culturally appropriate support work does not only involve a mirroring of support worker and service user but the understanding, recognition and sharing of culture and how this integrates into an individual’s identity.

b. Have there been any outcomes that have surprised you?

One of the most positive outcomes of the project is the continuous positive feedback we receive from service users and clients about our support workers. This has occurred both when service users met directly with program participants and interacting casually and observed at community engagement events such as Good Vibes and AccessABILITY. Many families and new clients have requested support workers in meetings and during scheduling of support work because of these interactions. NDIS clients are continuously accessing our program participants for 1:1 support have also expressed how happy they are when engaging with the workers.

The community engagement that has occurred ‘organically’ has been a further welcome surprise. ECSC has experienced the biggest growth in NDIS community access service uptake from people with disability from Vietnamese backgrounds - 14 new clients to date. There is evidence to suggest that this is a result of word of mouth spread of information about the quality of ECSC’s support worker workforce including the uptake of Vietnamese-speaking support workers in the project. This makes choice and control a reality and gives community a sense of ownership in NDIS, by seeing themselves represented in the care workforce with the recruitment of one Vietnamese-speaking worker. We have been inundated with requests from Vietnamese families

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because of this and have managed to recruit 10 new clients in 3 months because our workforce choices have fostered this trust with community.

The professional development pathways in place that are being utilised by support workers was also unexpected. There is a higher-level interest than expected by program participants to build on their knowledge and skills in the sector and plan professional paths in the care industry by pursuing more work experience and further education.

Perhaps the most worthwhile of the surprise outcomes of the project was the high-calibre of program participants we received. There is a tendency by the sector and by services to discount values-based work at low-income levels. We have found by targeting recruitment across tertiary education institutions and youth-targeted organisations we can attract high-calibre applicants with diverse range of skills and lived experience and similar values, that contribute to quality of service. All of our workers had completed or where pursuing a tertiary qualification in areas including: public health, law, psychology, education, social work, criminology, health, computer science, community services and sciences – somewhere pursuing second and third tertiary qualifications. They also had a range of life-experiences from living in other countries to refugee/humanitarian status and homelessness.

c. Were there outcomes that you expected to see, but didn’t?

Based on our various initial discussion and consultations with youth services and tertiary education institutions as well as careers counsellors and advisers we were prepared to see high attrition rates increase over the course of the project. Interestingly the opposite was the case. Apart from two recruits exiting the program at inception, there were no other program dropouts. Over the duration of the project recorded increased enthusiasm and passion for support work in our participants.

3.3 Reflecting on context: what worked, for whom and in what circumstances?

a. What worked well to support the achievement of your intended outcomes? In what situations did it work well?

The main part of the project that worked well was that human rights values were at the core of recruitment and worked in our favor to engage young people to become support workers and to attract people with disability to be a part of the process through a truly inclusive model of peer-input into workforce development. This alignment of values and mission meant that there was great synergy between workers and clients and a clear understanding of the importance of everyone's role in the work and the greater impact it would have for realization of the rights of people with disability and the community more broadly.

Principles that were identified as essential in developing, delivering and reviewing the MSC service to support people with disability clustered around three key themes: Knowing the person; Getting the Services Right and Relationships and Community.

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A process of consultations was held with families, people with disabilities, disability sector organisations and community members in Perth, Bunbury and Albany in April 2011. The consultations found a high level of consistency regarding what participants believed were the principles and characteristics of effective service delivery, as well as the issues and potential barriers that need to be addressed to fully support the implementation of effective service design principles.

These three principles were at the core of all our strategies and implementations for the program and worked for program participants, service users and community engagement strategies. This person-centered approach to service delivery is easily replicable to other services in the sector if following these three main principles.

b. What didn’t work so well in your project? In what situations didn’t it work so well, and why?

Staff retention costs and the client demand to create enough work viable for small organisations like ours does come with many challenges. We risk losing our staff to other organisations that also recognise the extensive, culturally-appropriate training and skills our workers bring to the industry and our workers have been approached by many other businesses in the sector including competitors such as HireUp and Better Caring. We run the risk of losing them to more frequent requests for work and competitive wages and incentives.

Something else that we wanted to achieve in our initial bid was the cross-over of support workers into Aged Care sector work as well. The coordination between disability and aged care programs wasn’t easy and as a result our workers lack experience in this sector. Challenges were encountered to entering the aged care support workforce because of much stricter guidelines about qualifications, accredited training and expertise in areas such as personal care, manual handling and assistance of administration of medication. These factors would need to be able to successfully cross-over into this sector of care industry. ECSC would most definitely want to pursue this as we have made a commitment to deliver Aged Care Support packages.

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c. Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

We would look for longer lead in times for projects as complex as this and in retrospect probably attempt to roll out two to three rounds of recruitment to create a larger workforce in the same amount of time. Once the work and logistics had been in place for the first cohort it would only mean rerunning the same logic and repeating the same steps to create second and third cohort. The first cohort could complete their work placement and training first and act as mentors for the second cohort and so on and so forth. However, this would have required more mentorship and would need to have provided enough clients and demand for support work to sustain the pool of workers. Small organisations like ours would struggle with this unless we were able to partner with like-minded organisations and apply for small funding or grants to sustain staff perhaps by utilising peer-led training by people with disability.

3.4 Reflecting on legacy: how sustainable are the innovations demonstrated?

a. Are you planning to continue with any of the practices or initiatives you tested during the project? Which practices and what will it require to continue with this approach?

We are planning to continue with the casual support workers pool and have our Board of Directors, in acknowledging the great work of the project and possible sustainability have made a financial commitment for one year. The practices we will require to do this include:

Recruitment strategies; Training and Peer-led mentoring program; Peer-input Focus Groups and Service User feedback model Will require ongoing staff development strategies to keep and retain staff and to

continue to improve their skills and understanding for best practice across care industry sectors. The TAFE NSW partnership will help with this.

b. Please explain how the changes you undertook can be sustained within the NDIS pricing framework?

We have doubled our disability workforce and significantly increased the organisation’s potential to service NDIS clients from CALD backgrounds. This includes being able to ‘bridge-the-gap’ in the sector for access and service delivery to CALD clients with a unique bilingual/bicultural Disability Support Workforce - which is in high demand.

Our MSC support workers are assisting with Group and Community activities through our Saturday Program with Adults with Disability, Saturday Program for Kids with Disability, Thursday night social group for Adults with Disability as well as Vacation Care program which runs during the school holidays. Many of the support workers are also assisting our 1:1 Individual Support Work requests as they increase making our NDIS Service Delivery Community Access arm possible.

We are now also exploring the possibility of Personal Care and Manual Handling training as well as Assistance with Medication training and Risk and Assessment

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workshops to boost our ability to service more NDIS Service requests. We have just been approved for Centre-Based Activities and have already engaged some of the support workers to develop programs based on the skills and interests they bring with them to the program, such as dance, yoga, computer coding, architecture and design, arts and craft, martial arts, athletics and much more.

This recruitment process has been cost effective because of key strategies such as group interviews and applicant vetting. Under the NDIS pricing framework being able to keep such administration costs down is essential to long-term sustainability.

The retention of high-calibre workforce of support workers can also add to the sustainability within NDIS framework if we keep the focus on values-based work and a human-rights approach to care.

Our ability to respond to the needs of community is also aiming to build a sustainable model that a) keeps workers b) keeps a young workforce interested and motivated.

c. Was the approach you trialled suitable to be replicated or adapted by other disability service providers? If yes, what types of service providers would be most likely to benefit and what would they need to do?

We believe our approach is suitable to be replicated and/or adapted by other service providers through:

Our outreach of CALD communities, Our casual recruitment strategy and innovative recruitment process Our human rights and values-based approach to care Engagement of people with disability at all levels of program development,

implementation and evaluation.

They require small cost-effective changes to the culture of organisations to be successful and sustainable. The types of service providers most likely to benefit from our project model would be organisations who work with diverse stakeholders, who are values-driven and committed to leadership and real empowerment of people with disability.

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